Family mystery deciphered by website in 15 minutes

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Family mystery deciphered by website in 15 minutes

(KTVI) – An 18-year-old family mystery was solved in 15 minutes by users of the website Metafilter. A user posed this question, “In my grandmother’s final days battling brain cancer, she became unable to speak and she filled dozens of index cards with random letters of the alphabet. I’m beginning to think that they are the first letters in the words of song lyrics, and would love to know what song this was. This is a crazy long shot, but I’ve seen Mefites pull off some pretty impressive code-breaking before!”

The family puzzled over the index cards for years. The user’s grandmother died when she was a child. According to the post the kids in the family thought their grandmother was leaving a code for the family.

The user posted transcribed part of the code for users to decypher. “PDGNHBOBVPNSNHANAOENCNANHPNCPND,NUOCPNNPNAPNMSMDKBMLPOWP,NAP,]NEENTGBTMLSHSSSTMALHFFTMOFPANSTP,NIOOIPNTPNROANTRSANTOTTAPOD,PLUADONNOANPBOOLL,PKUASASIMAB,PAGA,]PMOMTAVMAJAMMSSSLLABAPMUTTCTCCATFGSHHILANRNPHTAOLP,]

Does it look familiar? A Metafilter user named harperpitt recognized the code. The letters in the code represented words. The index cards contained prayers written in shorthand over and over. For instance, the “Lords Prayer” that starts with, “Our father who art in heaven” would be written as, “OFWAIHHBTNTKCTWBDOEAIIIHFUTDODBAFUOTAWFTWTAUALUNITBDUFEFTITKTPATGFAEA”